The Grand Illusion
Apparently, if the polls are correct, a slim majority of Americans believe that life was better during the last administration, even in the depths of the pandemic, when we had a President who seriously considered injecting bleach into people’s veins as a treatment for COVID and who later tried to overturn an election.
For all the uproar over immigration, no one seems to remember or understand that the Biden Administration has deported more illegal immigrants than did the Trump Administration. And while the Trump Administration talked about bringing jobs back to the U.S., the only thing the Trump Administration did was grant a minuscule tax cut to the average American and a whopping tax cut to the wealthy and corporations, while the Biden Administration passed legislation resulting in the building of high-tech factories in the U.S. They also forget that Trump’s spending policies set off the inflation that they hate, and that inflation rates have come down under Biden.
And those fond “memories” seem to omit the fact that Trump paid hush money to a porn star, and drove small companies and contractors out of business because he wouldn’t pay his bills. Or the fact that he was convicted of tax fraud and sexual assault, or that there’s a recording of him illegally soliciting votes. Or that he did nothing for four hours while police were fighting for their lives in the Capitol. Or the fact that lawyers won’t work for him unless they’re paid in advance.
Nope. None of those memories seem to count… or even be remembered.
Apparently, inconvenient and proven facts don’t seem to have much weight against well-delivered bombastic rhetoric that paints an overly rosy picture of a past that never was.
Your point is completely correct. The polls are increasingly inaccurate. Or as accurate as likes on social media. Phone polls aren’t accurate. Only a subgroup has land lines and most people with cell phones don’t answer their phone unless the number shows up as a person or business they know. With a large part of the country working remotely some of the time, asking people on the street doesn’t work. In most places people won’t open their doors to someone asking questions. I wouldn’t be surprised if some are simply AIs making stuff up. Some of the others are probably quick polls where partisan groups use SMS messages to get responses. The poll question was on Colbert last night (Wednesday) where it said 12% of respondents preferred Dean Phillips over Biden. Dean Phillips responded that the poll was off because less than 5% even knew who he was.
With too many groups using polls to prove their point, most of them are meaningless.
I frequently hear people talk about how much lower gasoline prices were under Trump compared to now. For some reason they cite prices from the height of the pandemic in comparison to present day prices which is in no way accurate or fair. However, when you adjust for inflation (triggered by Trump) the disparity is far less what people claim.
Memories are made of… the opinions of ~640 random people who actually pick up their phone for “Unknown Caller”. There’s statistically significant sampling then there’s absurdity.
♫♪♪ “ Aah; I remember it well”! ♫♪♪
I love the allusion, especially since everything in the song is remembered wrong!
“when we had a President who seriously considered injecting bleach into people’s veins as a treatment for COVID”.
VERY unlikely; I’m sure he wouldn’t have tried it on himself. More likely his characteristic hyperbole (one criticism I acknowledge is that shooting his mouth off tends to hit his foot, which distracts from getting things done). And not thinking before saying it that there are people out there who are ignorant enough to try it (someone died of using chloroquine phosphate (a variant of the anti-malaria drug not proven to help with COVID) meant for cleaning fish tanks), not all of whom are Trump followers, BTW.
How many of his Core voters support him now because they have done so for so long that:
“Some people have such a fragile ego, such brittle self-esteem, such a weak “psychological constitution,” that admitting they made a mistake or that they were wrong is fundamentally too threatening for their egos to tolerate. Accepting they were wrong, absorbing that reality, would be so psychologically shattering that their defense mechanisms do something remarkable to avoid doing so—they literally distort their perception of reality to make it (reality) less threatening. Their defense mechanisms protect their fragile ego by changing the very facts in their mind, so they are no longer wrong or culpable.”
(Psychology Today)
Bleach injections…”It’s just the flu”…having peaceful protesters tear-gassed so he can have a photo op…”I’m a stable genius”…the list goes on and on.
Anything Trump says, the opposite is undoubtedly true. He is so convinced he’s smarter than everyone that he’s never bothered to learn anything beyond real estate. He is one of the most ignorant people, and might as well be abysmally stupid, thanks to his endless faults.
I can’t see him winning the election, because he provides so much material for attack ads that the moderates will likely turn away.
And hey, maybe he’ll end up in jail first. We can hope.
(Note: I’m a conservative. Maybe that’s why I feel so strongly.)